Thanks, Axel. I tried rating in Explorer...sure enough, same error. I then tried some jpg files that had no previous IPTC & it worked fine. Next I picked a fresh jpg & added IPTC in FPV....still worked! I tried the same with PhotoMe...still worked! I tried it with XnView....got an error. Most of my photos had added IPTC from XnView. Maybe because XnView uses the outdated version of IPTC, I don't know.

Hmm, at least you know where the problem might come from... You should search their forum to see if that was reported before and if there is a solution to "fix" existing files so they work again with Windows' rating.

Axel wrote:The relative path notation uses the MSDOS 2.0 dot and double dot convention... Single dot means current folder, double dot means parent folder, i.e. one level up the folder tree. The double dot in your example will create a sibling folder, use a single dot to create a subfolder relative to the current one.

Thanks, that worked! So basically the workflow is to go through a folder of pictures, rate the ones I want, and when I'm done, run the rule on all the images in the folder. Seems to work well, thanks for the quick responses!

Yes this is one possible workflow, glad to learn you found a way to dispatch the files the way you wanted!

Another option, besides View Filters and batch copy rules, is to rename the files with a "rating prefix", for example "Image.nef" with a rating of 5 becomes "{5}Image.nef", this way the normal file name sorting in Explorer will present the files in the desired order and you can then manage the files yourself directly from Explorer. This is a way to actually "rate" raw files without touching the content at all.

There is an option to activate this automatic renaming in the program's preferences.